Michał Marczak to Direct 'Perfection,' Adaptation of Booker-Shortlisted Berlin Novel

Michał Marczak, the Polish director who won the 2016 Sundance directing prize for "All These Sleepless Nights," will make his narrative feature debut with "Perfection." The film adapts Italian author Vincenzo Latronico's novel of the same name, shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize.

The project pairs three European producers. Roman Paul of Germany's Razor Film ("Quo Vadis, Aida?"), Britain's Andrea Calderwood of London-based Potboiler Productions, and Italy's Marta Donzelli of Vivo Film ("The Last One for the Road") are developing the drama together. Donzelli helped win the bidding war for the book's rights, negotiated with Latronico's literary agent, Claire Sabatié-Garat.

What is the novel about?

"Perfection" — translated and sold in more than 40 countries — follows Anna and Tom, a millennial expat couple living in Berlin during the 2010s. "Their life as young digital creatives revolves around slow cooking, Danish furniture, sexual experimentation and the city's 24-hour party scene – an ideal existence shared by an entire generation and tantalizingly lived out on social media," the book's English-language synopsis reads.

The gloss cracks as the decade wears on. "But beyond the images, dissatisfaction and ennui burgeon," the synopsis continues. Work turns repetitive, friends move home and have children, and the couple's progressive politics amount to little more than boycotting Uber, tipping in cash or never eating tuna. A failed attempt at activism pushes Anna and Tom toward "ever more radical steps in the pursuit of an authenticity and a sense of purpose perennially beyond their grasp."

Why Marczak?

Paul told Variety that the story answers a question his company had been chasing. "I've been living in Berlin since 1998 and with all the younger producers in my company – who are either expats or born there – we had long been looking for an original IP about what went on there in the 2010s when Berlin really meant something to the world," he said at the Rome MIA Market.

Marczak's hybrid style, which blurs documentary and fiction, fits the material. His latest film, "Closure" — about a teenager's disappearance and his father's search for him — premiered at Sundance and reaches U.S. theaters via 1-2 Special on Oct. 28. Paul called Marczak's films works by someone "who has a very good eye and ear" for young people, adding that "his sense of visuals is sublime." He also noted that Marczak has already shot in Berlin: the 2012 documentary "Fuck for Forest," about a Berlin-based NGO that funds environmental causes by selling eco-pornography online.

What changes on the page?

Marczak will write the English-language screenplay himself — and, unlike Latronico's atmospheric novel, it will include dialogue. The producers say they are "in constant dialogue" with the author, who "has been very supportive of our choice of director," though he won't write the script directly.

When can audiences expect it?

The project sits in early development. Next comes a treatment, then a full screenplay. "We are taking a step-by-step approach, building the development package before we take it to the market," Calderwood said, noting that "there is plenty of interest in the IP."

She also sees the novel's tight construction as an asset. "In those early days of social media people were more idealistic about what it could achieve and how it allowed them to live the digital nomad life," Calderwood said. "Because it is such a perfectly formed novel, we feel there is a way to make a perfectly formed film, which will have universal access and appeal."